THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BACK-ROOM TEAM THAT SAVED APOLLO 13
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IF EVERYTHING GOES smoothly, nobody remembers your work.
But on April 13, 1970, an oxygen tank explosion aboard the Apollo 13 spacecraft set a harrowing mission into motion—and its success would turn a team of heartland boys into national heroes. A little more than two days into the mission’s voyage to the moon, the command module began to lose its supply of electricity and water. That’s when astronaut John Swigert uttered the phrase that would implant mission control in the public’s consciousness: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
Houston—those working behind the scenes at NASA—is the focus of a new documentary that explores the history of the Apollo space program.
“Most of the attention around Apollo has focused on the astronauts,” says Keith Haviland, a producer of Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo, released last week. “But the film is about those people in the back room at NASA who really made the missions happen through planning, through monitoring the flights, through dealing with emergencies.”